Why aren't dinosaurs in the bible?

[Laro]

Um right, but one would imagine if they wrote about lions being ferocious, that 100 foot tall lizards would be a *little* bit more ferocious, no?

But you know, not 100ft tall dinosaurs were carnivores. A lion would be described as a very dangerous animal seen around. People did not know much those days. They even thought the the world was square (or something simialar).

 

[phantasmor]

as to answer your question i don't know why you think just because some* dinosaurs were giant and meat eating means that they could catch a lion. Like i said before t Rex was very clumsy and some scientists think it was a scavenger. So if a t Rex was not fast enough it would not catch the lion... also no other dinosaur that big has ever been described as fast but lions on the other hand have been described as fast numerous times some 1 on wiki answers said 25mph but i would not go by that because it is wiki answers

 

[phantasmor]

ok i finally have an answer for that it is because there were not that many.

you say oh now how could you go against your earlier statement? that is because i thought about it a long while and have come to the conclusion that after the flood there was not a good enough environment for them to reproduce very fast and therefore would be very few in number.

oh but there were billions of dinosaurs. that's like saying there were billions of lions of rabbits sure over thousands of years there were billions but that does not mean there were billions at the same time. and if dinosaurs lived over millions of years then there would be trillions maybe even more

feel free to point out any flaws in that statement also if you want to argue that i changed my assumptions then i would like to point out that scientists change their assumptions like underwear not long ago it was millions of years that the earth existed before that it was tens of thousands now it is billions it will not be long befor5e it is trillions

 

[phantasmor]

maybe it is because some of them were killed off soon after they exited the arc and some of them were simply harder to kill like the flying serpent i think to be a pterodactyl(but i cant prove because it did not go into an in depth description) or behemoth
15 ¶ Behold now behemoth, which I made with thee; he eateth grass as an ox.
16 Lo now, his strength [is] in his loins, and his force [is] in thenavel of his belly.
17He moveth his tail like a cedar: the sinews of his stones are wrapped together.
18 His bones [are as] strong pieces of brass; his bones [are] like bars of iron.
19 He [is] the chief of the ways of God: he that made him can make his
sword to approach [unto him].
20 Surely the mountains bring him forth food, where all the beasts of the field play.
21 He lieth under the shady trees, in the covert of the reed, and fens.
22 The shady trees cover him [with] their shadow; the willows of the brook
compass him about.
23 Behold, he drinketh up a river, [and] hasteth not: he trusteth that he
can draw up Jordan into his mouth.
24 He taketh it with his eyes: [his] nose pierceth through snares

that sounds like a brontosaurus to me(even though other translations have been less literally translated happen to lean more to a hippo) i mean i don't know why there aren't more descriptions but that goes back to the first point of this post
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[Dionysos]

as to answer your question i don't know why you think just because some* dinosaurs were giant and meat eating means that they could catch a lion. Like i said before t Rex was very clumsy and some scientists think it was a scavenger. So if a t Rex was not fast enough it would not catch the lion... also no other dinosaur that big has ever been described as fast but lions on the other hand have been described as fast numerous times some 1 on wiki answers said 25mph but i would not go by that because it is wiki answers

I'm a little bit lost with this now... Where are you going with this? Why do we still keep going back to whether dinosaurs could or could not hunt lions?!

maybe it is because some of them were killed off soon after they exited the arc and some of them were simply harder to kill like the flying serpent i think to be a pterodactyl(but i cant prove because it did not go into an in depth description) or behemoth

Hang on a minuite.... Dinosaurs made it onto the ark?! I knew it must have been big to make room for all those animals... but big enough for 100ft tall lizards? Massive 3 horned beasts with jaws the size of a rhino?
And are you suggesting that there was a mass dinosaur hunt following the exiting of the ark, despite Noah's attempt to save God's lovely creatures?
I'm sure you're just thinking it through in your head at the same time, and I won't jump on you and force you to the ground, but I just have to say that this thread is begining to verge on the realms of bizzare now.

I'm lost with where this thread is going. Are you saying that dinosaurs co-existed with humans, treated like ordinary every day animals, and then when they left the ark, they were either killed off or died due to complications created by the flood?

 

[phantasmor]

have you ever looked at a dinosaur egg? those would fit easily into the arc and would prevent them from eating the other animals

also i have posted 2 times that i do believe that humans and dinosaurs co-existed but i see as a rule in this forum you do not need to read past posts to criticize another post a rule i think should change otherwise this will continue to go in a circle

 

[Dionysos]

have you ever looked at a dinosaur egg? those would fit easily into the arc and would prevent them from eating the other animals

I have seen pictures of dinosaur eggs, yeah. But I don't see why they'd store dinosaur eggs in the ark either. It beats the point. That isn't ensuring the survival of the species (one male, one female) at all... You couldn't be sure what gender the unborn dinosaur would be. Besides if you only have eggs, then I'm pretty sure that rats, birds or even their mighty nemesis the lion might have a snack on the eggs. Remember this ark was on the water for a very long time. They would have got hungry.

also i have posted 2 times that i do believe that humans and dinosaurs co-existed but i see as a rule in this forum you do not need to read past posts to criticize another post a rule i think should change otherwise this will continue to go in a circle

I did read that, I was just asking if I was right in what you were trying to say, and perhaps asking more about your views on the ark and what happened to dinosaurs after it.

 

[phantasmor]

they had plenty of food if all animals that could be in eggs were that would leave large amounts of space for food as for the issue of not knowing the gender if all the animals came to Noah it would be safe to think that the eggs were brought to Noah somehow and that even though he couldn't know the genders he had to assume they were male and female because they were brought to him and even if they were not in eggs they

could just as easily have brought juveniles which in 150 days(a little less than half a year) they would probably not have developed into fully grown dinosaurs this is based on the fact that we do not know how fast dinosaurs develop and we can only speculate

 

[der Astronom]

Um...I'm not actually angry, and I made no mention of the dragons in the bible as being described as scaly and having wings. If you want an "angry" post I can show you one, but out of general decency, I won't do it in public.

However, what I was getting at is that the definition of a dinosaur that we consider today is that they don't breathe fire. You suggest that further research might make such a conclusion, but you cannot make a conclusion off of something that doesn't exist. Namely, the evidence that concludes that dinosaurs (or maybe some of them) breathe fire.

An alternate argument about the ark could be that there were so many different species that not all of them could fit in the ark. But that's neither here nor there, so...

If you want to bring up the argument about humans co-existing with dinosaurs here, go ahead. Since it is somewhat relevant to the existence of dinosaurs in the bible. However, please note that it has been firmly established through evidence and science that humans and dinosaurs did not co-exist.

 

[Dionysos]

they had plenty of food if all animals that could be in eggs were that would leave large amounts of space for food as for the issue of not knowing the gender if all the animals came to Noah it would be safe to think that the eggs were brought to Noah somehow and that even though he couldn't know the genders he had to assume they were male and female because they were brought to him and even if they were not in eggs they

could just as easily have brought juveniles which in 150 days(a little less than half a year) they would probably not have developed into fully grown dinosaurs this is based on the fact that we do not know how fast dinosaurs develop and we can only speculate

I dunno about that first point. I have this image of Noah with a checklist, seeing who is left and then hearing a rumbling in the distance.... Over the hilltops come hundreds of thousands of dinosaur eggs, in pairs, rolling non-stop for miles striving for their place in the ark.

As for the second possibility, baby dinosaurs would still be quite big (depending on your species), but yeah I take your point if they were around at the time they could have been on the ark.

So lets play it like that. The dinosaurs were on the ark. What happened after that? Surely a better theory would be that if dinosaurs existed in large numbers pre-flood (I don't believe they did), that they were wiped out with the flood? That would surely seem, if you wanted to believe human and dinosaur co-existence, more plausible as it gives a reason as to why they still aren't with us now AND gives a possible truth to stories such as Behemoth and Leviathan whose memory could have been preserved from pre-flood times. This isn't what I believe, I'm just putting it forward as an alternate possibility from your view on what happened to the dinosaurs. Perhaps the dinosaurs had angered God and he wanted to punish them? Perhaps thats why he caused the flood?

I still hold that the descriptions of Leviathan and Behemoth were just mythical descriptions like there have been in other cultures, and that such descriptions may or may not have been inspired by dinosaur or early mammal fossils found.

What year was the bible written in? I believe it was a time before people even knew that such a thing excists. Only after about a thousand years later an archaeologist would discover that dinosaurs did in fact excist.
The whole bible might change because of that discovery so they didn't bother writing them in.

Well it was only in the past few centuries that we started to use the term "dinosaur" to describe them... But these fossils pop out of the hillside all over the place and I find it unlikely that until that point NO-ONE had ever seen a fossil of a dinosaur. In fact we have evidence really that suggests that they did find dinosaur bones.

The difference is that until 1842, no-one knew what the bones were. When other people found them previously they were labelled as dragon bones, monster bones, bones of giants etc.

 

[phantasmor]

thank you i think i mean i cannot explain how or why but despite the fact that it only has in depth descriptions of 2 dinosaur-like creatures and one of them happens to breathe fire it does mention dinosaur-like creatures.

also i don't know why but i personally believe that when the bible mentions dragons it means dinosaurs but then again that IS my personal belief and i cannot prove it but the question of this thread is why aren't dinosaurs mentioned in the bible? well the answer is that it does it just mentions 2 and one of them happens to breathe fire

but then again i cant prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that those were descriptions of dinosaurs but they were dinosaur-like and as long as i can't prove it and you cant prove it either one of us will win and i leave it in the hands of the individual to make conclusions and maybe in the future when we know more about dinosaurs i might abandon my views

oh one last edit if you want to continue this discussion leave me out of it for now it is giving me a headache

 

[Dionysos]

thank you i think i mean i cannot explain how or why but despite the fact that it only has in depth descriptions of 2 dinosaur-like creatures and one of them happens to breathe fire it does mention dinosaur-like creatures.

also i don't know why but i personally believe that when the bible mentions dragons it means dinosaurs but then again that IS my personal belief and i cannot prove it but the question of this thread is why aren't dinosaurs mentioned in the bible? well the answer is that it does it just mentions 2 and one of them happens to breathe fire

but then again i cant prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that those were descriptions of dinosaurs but they were dinosaur-like and as long as i can't prove it and you cant prove it either one of us will win and i leave it in the hands of the individual to make conclusions and maybe in the future when we know more about dinosaurs i might abandon my views

I have no problem with the concept that they may be interpreted as dinosaur-like in description. They're large fierce toothed monsters. If they are dinosaurs, then it is the imagination telling us that and not the texts from the bible. Those descriptions are too grand really, and they don't give us anything to really, realistically, put a label on them as a certain type of dinosaur.

So not accurately portraying dinosaurs... But perhaps they writers of the Bible were trying their best? Not that I believe they had ever met a dinosaur, but to suggest that the descriptions of Behemoth and Leviathan are descriptions born out of an amalgamation of dinosaur bone discoveries and the wonders of the human imagination. Or... that they were entirely born out of the human imagination.

That said, I'm pretty sure that in early art and such Behemoth was presented as a giant bull type creature, similar to the Final Fantasy depictions of the animal (though I could, and probably am, wrong).

I think a lot of people are never going to agree in the dinosaurs being mentioned in the Bible. And those that do, may state that the dinosaurs were long dead before man. Thats just how science has worked out for this subject.

Also. Don't worry about people disagreeing with you. This is a debate thread, it happens. You are entitled to your view, and people will listen to it, think about it, and then respond with their own. Remember, it's easier to say "no that's wrong!" to someone elses point than it is to make your own. So I can understand why you have a headache at how this thread is going.

 

[der Astronom]

also i don't know why but i personally believe that when the bible mentions dragons it means dinosaurs but then again that IS my personal belief and i cannot prove it but the question of this thread is why aren't dinosaurs mentioned in the bible? well the answer is that it does it just mentions 2 and one of them happens to breathe fire

Does that mean you believe certain dinosaurs breathe fire? I don't think dinosaurs breathe fire--maybe they did; who knows, but as far as scientific knowledge and evidence goes, dinosaurs don't breathe fire. For that reason, I must reject that the "dragons" as spoken of and described in the bibles are the same dinosaurs that scientists have discovered through their fossils. Dinosaurs aren't mentioned in the bible because the writers make up fantasies about what dinosaurs are, even though they aren't necessarily what they say they are, or borrowed from some other mythologies that existed before the bible did. A fantasy based description of a dinosaur that is far fetched is inaccurate, and therefore, not adequate enough for me to say that there were dinosaurs described in the bible. Even if you want to say they were, it tells us nothing useful or "factual" about dinosaurs.

*By "factual", I mean that you cannot read the bible on its own and make any accurate conclusions about dinosaurs. In other words, you can't conclude that dinosaurs breathed fire or had scales on the bible's own merits; you only believe that to be true because scientists have found that dinosaurs are reptiles, and they have no evidence that dinosaurs breathed fire.

but then again i cant prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that those were descriptions of dinosaurs but they were dinosaur-like and as long as i can't prove it and you cant prove it either one of us will win and i leave it in the hands of the individual to make conclusions and maybe in the future when we know more about dinosaurs i might abandon my views

The problem is, to assert that there were dinosaurs in the bible is to assert that the description of the "dinosaurs" in the bible are inaccurate, and it is for that reason that I must reject that the bible ever talked about "real" dinosaurs. I have difficulty seeing why anyone might consider that there were dinosaurs in the bible that don't represent the real definition and criteria of what a dinosaur actually is as we know it today. There is nothing to prove if I say that dinosaurs aren't in the bible, as one cannot prove a negative; I have already explained why the bible doesn't talk about dinosaurs.

 

[Laro]

Right... totally missing the point though.

let me explain it slowly

GIANT 100FT TALL LIZARDS WOULD BE WRITTEN ABOUT.

clearer now?

How would they know if dinosaurs were exctinct?

 

[phantasmor]

i have one question for tessbot but what do you mean when you say that you cannot prove a negative?

 

[phantasmor]

oh so you are saying that the burden of prof lies on the person trying to prove something and because i cannot prove it based on lack of scientific evidence on dinosaurs you win

 

[phantasmor]

yes

what kind of evidence would there need to be for me to be able to prove that dinosaurs were mentioned in the bible?

side note:

Fire breathing dragons... Now I am very interested in these. I would like to know where the first fire breathing monsters came from

i found a site(or 4) which states that the first mention of dragons was in the bible followed shortly after by the Greeks. that is something that astounded me

 

[Dionysos]

yes

what kind of evidence would there need to be for me to be able to prove that dinosaurs were mentioned in the bible?

side note: i found a site which states that the first mention of dragons was in the bible followed shortly after by the Greeks. that is something that astounded me

Well some things will be impossible, or very difficult to find evidence for. Some times people can speculate, come up with ideas that make people think differently, and then use that as a platform to lift from and look for evidence.
I think evidence helps and it certainly gives you a better argument, but I think that (depending on the statement) if people suggest something that sounds reasonable then it could still feed further discussion, or change the direction of a topic.

As for your question about dinosaurs... What you really want, as evidence for co-existence, is the discovery of a t-rex skeleton with a fossilised human or lion inside (what would have been) its belly. Or perhaps just on the same rock layer and age etc.

What dates does this article state that the Greeks wrote of dragons? Also, I know an exact date for the OT of the Bible is impossible to determine as it is collaborative (supposedly), but what years was this first mention of the dragons written in?

 

[phantasmor]

"In Ancient Greece the first mention of a "dragon" is derived from the Iliad where Agamemnon is described as having a blue dragon motif on his sword belt and a three-headed dragon"the Iliad was made in 720 ad and in Isaiah is the fist book that mentions the word dragon and Isaiah was born in the 8th century BC but in job it mentions leviathan which is said to be a dragon in Isaiah but job does not give an author but " If Moses was the author the date would be around 1440 B.C. If Solomon was the author the date would be around 950 B.C." so yeah the bible mentioned it before the Greeks if Moses wrote Job but 8th century starts with 700bc so either way i think that author may or may not be right about that but that author was making assumptions all 4 of them actually

 

[Dionysos]

"In Ancient Greece the first mention of a "dragon" is derived from the Iliad where Agamemnon is described as having a blue dragon motif on his sword belt and a three-headed dragon"the Iliad was made in 720 ad and in Isaiah is the fist book that mentions the word dragon and Isaiah was born in the 8th century BC but in job it mentions leviathan which is said to be a dragon in Isaiah but job does not give an author but " If Moses was the author the date would be around 1440 B.C. If Solomon was the author the date would be around 950 B.C." so yeah the bible mentioned it before the Greeks if Moses wrote Job but 8th century starts with 700bc so either way i think that author may or may not be right about that but that author was making assumptions all 4 of them actually

Well the works of Homer as we know it were composed in about 720 BC, not AD, placing it at about the same time as Isaiah.
If Job was written in about 1440 BC - 950 BC, I'm not sure. I don't know much about the historicity of the Bible, but I hadn't realised parts had been written by then. Perhaps written in some form and written up properly when all the texts were brought together. If that is so then subject matter can change and twist.

Regardless, I'm pretty sure dragons and similar creatures that could evolve into depictions of dragons would have popped up in art in earlier times before 1440 BC, such as in Egypt, the Near East and Minoan Crete.
The minoans for example were rather fond of the griffin, and if you look at the basic shape and pose of it, add scales and lose the beak and you have a dragon. But I'm losing myself now...
But as for the Near East in this time period there are many depictions of mythical serpentine or what could be described as dragon-like creatures.

I think what I'm getting at is it is very hard to guess when dragons first appeared in text or art, as large portions of the Bronze Age world have yet to be excavated, and the majority lost forever. Texts etc are very minimal from this period and there is practically no literature in most cultures, with most of what has been found being administrative texts and records. What we can look for, mostly, is wall depictions, frescoes, art and monumental architecture.

The mention of dragons in Homer as a motif used in part of an ornate belt suggests a theme that had been common use at at least by Homers time. And considering Homer is refering to the Bronze Age Mycenaeans in his poems, and such poetry was passed down via numerous poets right from the very collapse of the Mycenaean civilisation down to Homer, there is hints of a preserved memory of the older Greek civilisations in Homer, suggesting that dragon motifs could go back to at least then (or Homer could have added in contemporary motifs). I stray again. Damn mention of Homer gets me going! Anyway I think dragons (less common than griffins though) were practically established in art during these times. But I'm not entirely sure. I'll have to check it up. No frescoes etc spring to mind with dragons on. Griffins yes. Daemons yes. Lions yes. Sphynxes yes. Dragons? I dunno, but its very likely.

EDIT - Urgh. To be fair to me, last night I was writing that at half 2 in the morning and I was tired. What I was trying to say (and to keep it relevant) was that 1440 BC if that really is the date that Job was written, and if Leviathan and Behemoth are to be regarded as dragons, that may still not be the earliest mention of a dragon. Perhaps in surviving written word, but in art and architecture? I'm not sure.
I have searched for dragon depictions in Minoan art, and find none. I have only done a quick google search, but if I come across anything in my reading (I study early Greek Cult among other things) I will be sure to post it up here.
There is bound to be some earlier references to dragons than the Iliad and perhaps Job (though we can't be sure of a date). I don't believe that any of these invented the dragon. In short, myths are almost always formed before they are written down, and creatures can appear on motifs for all sorts of reasons.